Last October I learned that reading was bad for my health.
Apparently due to a larger screen size, reading on an iPad before bed gives out even worse blue light exposure than from your phone. Studies have been shown that increased blue light from phones and tablets before bed delays melatonin release which makes falling asleep harder.
But I wondered if it was actually just scrolling Twitter / Youtube that disturbed sleep compared to the blue light.
Indeed in a study on college students social media usage before bed, it showed that blue light was independently bad for your sleep. Though the interaction with social media definitely made it much worse.
And so suddenly, since I hadn’t slept that great recently, I no longer could read books before bed on my iPad.
This led me down a rabbit hole of what else was wrong with my night time routine.
I wanted to run through an exact scientific routine that would help me feel well rested every day. Through some research I discovered:
15 minutes of sunlight on my face every day in the first hour of waking up was crucial according to Andrew Huberman.
Someone on Twitter claimed that drinking Pedialyte before bed would help with dehydration at night while preventing you from waking up to pee.
On that same note - gulping water vs sipping it before bed is known to increase the likelihood of pressure on your bladder. I make it a point to start sipping my water slowly when it gets closer to bed time.
Taking supplements like magnesium glycinate and L-theanine an hour before bed is known to help with calm and relaxation for sleep. I buy these supplements but then realize to consume them before bed I would have to gulp water or else the pills feel stuck in the middle of my throat…
This went on and on….and spoiler alert - it eventually all came crashing down with worse insomnia for yours truly.
I suffered from sleep-maintenance insomnia for almost a month last November and then again in February of this year.
If you’ve never suffered from extended periods of insomnia, then not being able to sleep sounds foreign. And mostly it throws everything out of whack; any resemblance of a routine or feeling energized during the day.
Some nights I would wake up and just lie in bed trying to not think of anything. Other times I would get up and work on my laptop or journal for an hour until I felt tired again and had crazy light dream sleep until late in the morning.
But in both bouts of insomnia, it all ended quite gradually with no real reason why.
The Argument Against Optimization
I’m starting to realize that over optimization can bring anyone down to pure misery. But finding that line is the hard part.
Nat Eliason touches on this point on Maybe Your Sleep Tracking is Killing You? when comparing two lives of people according to the death clock.
Let’s imagine two people:
Abe has never smoked, never drank. He works out for 60-90 minutes daily and considers himself optimistic. But he lives alone. He spends all day, aside from exercising, in front of a screen, either doing work he doesn’t care about or watching TV. He has no family nearby. He has no friends he can confide in…..No sense of purpose. He’s only optimistic because he thinks he’s going to be rich someday by slaving away at this unfulfilling job.
Obviously, this is not a good life. But by simple death clock measurements, it’s an ideal one. Abe may live to the ripe old age of 88, but I kinda doubt it. I suspect he dies sad and alone in front of the TV two years after retirement when he realized it was all a waste.
Compare that to Ben. He has a glass of wine every night or two, usually surrounded by friends when they’re sharing a dinner. He works a few hours a day on something he’s passionate about, then goofs off outside playings sports or spending time with his family. He’s not as lean as he could be, his BMI is 27, but he generally eats cleanly. He might indulge in a cigarette or cigar every week or two. He sleeps like a baby. He sold his TV years ago.
By death clock measurements, Ben is going to live noticeably shorter than Abe. About a decade shorter.
Do we believe that? I don’t. And this isn’t an issue with Death Clock. They seem to be using some of the best data we have access to. The issue is how much we rely on measurable data for making decisions.
Most of the time when we over optimize - likely we’re placing an over-emphasis on what we can measure, and we’re underestimating what we can’t.
Depending on my sleep tracker's morning report to dictate my mood sets me up for a negative chain reaction that can ruin any day. And whenever I attempted to optimize my sleep, it would trigger a subtle level of anxiety that would cascade and become uncontrollable, fueling a vicious cycle of sleep anxiety that would persist for weeks.
So it’s clear that good sleep is a result of many times NOT worrying about how much sleep you’re getting. That means being okay with reading chill books on my iPad before bed if I need to. And also feeling confident that good sleep habits maintained over time will eventually work themselves out in the end.
And so I still enjoy tracking my good habits and bad ones and drinking less overall, but I can’t say that attaining 100% on these goals will immediately put me in a nirvana of productivity and health.